WiFi controlled Wall Clock

Jan 2

iTechnology 8 Comments »

I'm going to try to shorten my blog entries' initial lengths and place any extra content in the article's dedicated page from now on. This will allow me to keep more articles on the main page and have a cleaner looking site.

Our Director walked in to our office today and took note of my RF/GPS Atomic Clock that's sitting on the mantle. I had originally brought it in to test the temperature of the office to figure out the problem with the heating/cooling settings to prove that there's a problem, but that's not the point here... In our library, we have used RF/GPS Atomic clocks for a majority of our building's clocks. Unfortunately, anyone that's ever owned an Atomic clock knows that they are not the greatest at keeping time. In fact, they sometimes grab the wrong time.

Well, in noticing the inherent problem with these types of clocks, the director asked me if I knew of any WiFi controlled wall clocks. I didn't know of any, but presumed there must be something out there that can take this into account. I mean, the Atomic clock I have here has buttons and switches on the back of it to set the timezone, daylight savings preference, and a way to set the time itself in case it can't get a clear signal.

Okay, so one would surely think that a hardware based WiFi clock exists - the only thing that needs to be set differently in this type of clock over the GPS/RF clock would be the NTP server it should use (so it's selectable, input enabled, or hardwired to a specific set of possibilities). That doesn't seem too hard.

Considering school buildings and businesses can spend upwards of $40,000 to purchase a single system that controls their clocks from a central location, wouldn't it be easier to just simply purchase the clocks themselves and not worry about anything else? The NTP server, if needed to be controlled centrally, could always be the organization's own server, so long as the NTP server could be set in the clock (firmware modification/upgrade over WiFi using something like the WakeOnLan packet syntax structure?).

Okay, from all my rambling you've probably realized that I've not found anything that can do this. The Atomic clocks can be found in extremely cheap retail stores for anywhere between $3 and $30, depending on quality. Similar business style clocks are selling for approximately $120. I'm not even going to list the price of the centrally controlled clock systems.

So, anyone out there that can do circuitboard programming interested in a new marketing venture? We certainly wouldn't mind being a test-bed for the clock, and I would relearn assembly level programming to assist in any way I could.

However, if this has already been created and someone knows (or has been able to find) one, please, PLEASE link me to it!

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

0 Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

8 Comments

Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)

James says:
01/02/2007 01:13:02 PM
This is when someone like me just thinks... "why not use a watch?"

As ever, your entry has me stumped.
Brendon says:
01/02/2007 03:52:33 PM
For a few reasons, actually.

Let's say you were hired out to do some contractual work for some super huge corporate big-time boss. You walk into the lobby ahead of schedule, about 20 minutes early because you want to be sure you're on time. However, you also know some people prefer precise timeliness rather than being overly early, so you wait in the lobby for 15 minutes, giving yourself enough leeway time to make it up to his specific floor and secretary to let him know you're there - you use the building's lobby clock as a time estimation because your clock (your cellphone) is set using satellites, you figure you're safer using the organization's time system.

When you walk up there, you waited so you had 2-3 minutes to spare showing that you were early, but not too early, and you did not have a "rushed" look on your face. But, lo and behold, the clock in that specific office is 13 minutes faster than the clock in the lobby! You're now late! That boss happened to be a very punctuality minded person, and as it was your first in-person meeting date to discuss the work, your timeliness has made him decide not to hire you without even seeing your work; and it wasn't even technically your fault (although I'm sure in this example you'd be kicking yourself for not just showing up overly early).

This is a simplified (although overly exaggerated) example. There are other reasons as to why clocks should just synchronize in an organization. For a library, it helps us to get people out of the library all around the same time. Patrons don't realize that when the library is closed, we literally are closed. Staff don't sit around "closing shop" for the next hour or two like a retail store - we're waiting for them to leave so we too can go home. (At least that's how it is here.) If a clock is 10 minutes slow, that ends up meaning that patrons will usually be in the library about 20 minutes after we're actually closed, and the doors locked up.
Sid Langford says:
02/29/2008 02:47:47 PM
Primex will be releasing a WiFi solution sometime this year...
Brendon Kozlowski says:
03/01/2008 11:54:42 PM
Thank you very much for the information, Sid! As of yet we have not decided on a solution.
Will says:
01/16/2008 11:53:35 AM
Indeed that would be a great idea, however I see one problem, power. It would be pretty much impossible to run a wifi receiver on the typical one or two AA cells that you expect a clock to need.

So AC power is needed. Once you have to get a wire to the clock, why not drop the wifi in favor of a POE Ethernet connection. These are available (as digital clocks, not your traditional clock face unfortunately) from an outfit in England, don't know th e price. It should be possible to the the cost well under $100 -- Just as a comparison, the $110 Polycom IP phones that we are currently deploying in my own company contain an NTP client to synchronize their time display. That is everything you need and a phone too.

(If you want to talk further, email me at will(insert at sign here)rhythm(insert dot here)com
Brendon Kozlowski says:
01/16/2008 02:05:34 PM
Will, thanks for the comment. I'll talk to my boss about that and see if he's still interested in taking this idea further. The plan was scrapped and long forgotten back then, and we have a new head honcho, but it may still very well be something we would want to look into.
Richard Mechelke says:
07/24/2008 01:40:15 PM
Primex Wireless launched Synchronous Network System, a WiFi Clock system on July 21, 2008.
Brendon Kozlowski says:
07/25/2008 10:04:01 AM
Richard Mechelke, thank you for the update on your company's release schedule. I am uncertain whether we are still looking for such a solution, but having information is still a very powerful thing and I appreciate your effort to inform. We will definitely take a look at it, at the very least. Thank you again.

Edit: We're in touch with a local sales representative to have a field-test done in our building's infrastructure. Thanks again.